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I just got my Casio Privia PX 350, without testing cos i read a lot of reviews.

But i'm quite disappointed. I have to say it sounds a little weird... I'm not sure if it's a problem with speakers, but all the piano voices have this very very muffled sound.

I have the SP 33 pedal unit and the CS-67P special stand. The sustain pedal is a little wonky, the notes don't hold as long as i thought it would. sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't.

From my experience with the Korg SP 250, and the Yamaha P 155, when I hold on to the sustain pedal and press a note with the "piano layered with strings" voice, the piano and strings volume should fade off at roughly the same time, with my foot still on the pedal.

However with the PX 350, the strings voice continues to maintain the same volume and goes on indefinitely as long as my foot is on the pedal. So the piano sounds fine, but there's a whole mass of strings overlapping one another when ever i play a song with the layered voice.

Is this how the PX 350 supposed to sound and work? Or did i get a faulty set?

When you guys are going to produce digital pianos with 7/8 and 15/16 size keys? It is mind boggling that nobody does that.Those standards are well established for years now.For expensive acoustic pianos there are replaceable keyboards.But no cheap digital pianos??? Or at least 88-key midi controllers?

The market for them would be huge. They are desperately needed for children and women to reach octaves without pain and for men with smaller hands to reach 10ths comfortably, especially that C#-F.I would not be surprised if most preferred smaller keys.We know from feedback about the acoustic piano keyboards of those sizes how easy it is to adapt to them.

And there is no technical difficulties involved: you can very simply make the keyboard with the same identical action, no need to hit real strings here.

And no risk involved either:It would be practically the same cost to produce them.And no R&D needed, just shrink the goddamn thing.You can even leave the size of the whole piano/keyboard unchanged.And you can start small and expand according to the demand.

There is a gold mine here waiting for a company which produces them first.

On another note: come on, anybody got PX-150 or PX-350 yet?Where are your impressions, detailed feedback about the differences in the action and sound compared to 130/330?

with the PX 350, the strings voice continues to maintain the same volume and goes on indefinitely as long as my foot is on the pedal.

In my experience (and IMO, fortunately), that is the more common way it is done on most keyboards. It actually more accurately reflects real instrument behavior, since real strings do not "fade away" as piano notes do. And practically speaking, it is particularly desirable if you want the string effect to sustain until you specifically release it, which can be useful especially when you're using multiple keyboards.

It does mean you may need to be a little more cognizant of your sustain pedal techniques... if the strings are overwhelming the piano due to the infinite sustain, odds are good that you're being heavy-footed in your use of the sustain pedal in the first place.

And no risk involved either:It would be practically the same cost to produce them.And no R&D needed, just shrink the goddamn thing.

Tooling up to produce a new set of keys could easily be a 6-figure investment. Would it generate more sales? I don't know... I've never heard anyone request this before. And young kids and small women have successfully learned to play on standard size pianos, probably for centuries.

Interestingly, for some reason, there does seem to be some variation on unweighted actions. I have a Yamaha S30 where the keys are just slightly narrower than normal, and an old Studiologic/Fatar where they are slightly wider.

From my experience with the Korg SP 250, and the Yamaha P 155, when I hold on to the sustain pedal and press a note with the "piano layered with strings" voice, the piano and strings volume should fade off at roughly the same time, with my foot still on the pedal.

However with the PX 350, the strings voice continues to maintain the same volume and goes on indefinitely as long as my foot is on the pedal. So the piano sounds fine, but there's a whole mass of strings overlapping one another when ever i play a song with the layered voice.

I auditioned a PX-350 on Wednesday and experienced this as well. Not having all the extra sound and pedaling editing options that a more expensive board might have leaves you without any real options to deal with it. I was really looking forward to this board, but this just might be a deal breaker for me, unfortunately.

Given the price and weight bracket of this thing, I'm guessing that anyone who looks at the PX-350 as anything other than principally a digital piano, with a few "extras" of varying quantity thrown in for good measure, is going to be disappointed. You're also not going together the best out of it if you rely on its internal speakers for amplification.

However with the PX 350, the strings voice continues to maintain the same volume and goes on indefinitely as long as my foot is on the pedal. So the piano sounds fine, but there's a whole mass of strings overlapping one another when ever i play a song with the layered voice.

Is this how the PX 350 supposed to sound and work? Or did i get a faulty set?

There are seven string patches to choose from for layering with your piano. Do they all do this? (Don't know myself...)

Tooling up to produce a new set of keys could easily be a 6-figure investment

Or it may be enough to tell a robot the desired width of a key. Japanese factories run without a single worker and can flexibly produce anything they want to. Or so I heard

Originally Posted By: anotherscott

And young kids and small women have successfully learned to play on standard size pianos, probably for centuries.

.

Read the feedback about replaceable keyboards for grand pianos.Women cry of joy and cannot stop. For the first time in their lifes they can play without pain. And they adjust to it in five minutes. I guess, if you are a stride piano player, it might take a bit longer...

And for me that C#-F is pretty difficult too.Especially on Casio. Its keys are pretty stiff.I have a keyboard made by Fatar where it is much easier to reach - because the keys move sideways, I can squeeze them a few millimeters and that is enough for a huge difference.Still, to play such tenths quickly as in a chromatic scale and at high velocity - 15/16 would be perfect for me.

The difference on a tenth is 0.625 of the white key width for a 15/16 size keyboard. For 7/8 it would be what, 1.25 ? All the difference in the world.

I would buy one 15/16 immediately. Maybe even 7/8.Whoever makes it first. In fact, I would buy 7/8 for my sister too.Count two keyboards immediately sold. You hear, Casio?

I have to say it sounds a little weird... I'm not sure if it's a problem with speakers, but all the piano voices have this very very muffled sound.

2 things...some of the piano sounds, specifically mellow piano, dolce piano and classic piano are volume limited while others like Concert, Studio and Rock, etc. are not. Not sure yet why, but this is how our PX-350 models are. Also, we had a different model with a speaker out of phase that created wonky performance. It's an easy fix (or possible exchange) if that is your issue. It affected multiple aspects of playability, not just the sound coming out.

Had a weird issue today where I was playing with the volume knob turned to about 20% and I played a chord and the sound became very low and would not change regardless how high I turned the sound. I had to turn the keyboard off to get it back to normal.

BrokenChord, was the piano hooked via MIDI? Sometimes midi tracks on a computer or synths sending signals, etc. can get the part volume to very low settings, which are not controllable through the main volume control.

Of course it could be a defect, but I have had such behaviors via midi several times.

I'm reading some not so favourable reviews of the previous SP-32 (but not the majority), so I wonder what changes were made in the SP-33... Mr Martin?

I'm contemplating going with the Casio stand/pedal unit after I was initially not going to bother, mainly for the pedals as I honestly don't know what my other options are. I'm sure I don't really need 3 pedals at this early stage of my piano career but the pedal that comes with the 150/350, though I'm sure does the job, looks dinky and would probably sink into the carpet where I'll have the board most.

Also, Mike, I noticed the Casio site states the SP-33 as optional for the 150 and on the 350's page there is only mention of the SP-32 which I think could be updated?

Well I was unable to try the PX-150, as the store was closed. I spotted it again by chance in a mega-mall, but they were uninterested in letting a tourist touch any of their wares. Haha oh well, I'll go to GC when I get back home.

I cannot speak for Casio, however I very much doubt Kawai will ever produce a digital piano that does not feature full-sized keys.

The same is true of our acoustic pianos.

While I appreciate that the demand exists for such a product, I do not believe it's significant enough to warrant the considerable research, development, and production costs.

Kind regards,Jamesx

The demand might be much greater than you think.It's just that it does not even occur to people that they could demand such a thing. But once such keyboards become available, it is quite possible that almost nobody would buy keyboards with full-sized keys. These "full sized" keys were needed for acoustic pianos for technical reasons, not because they are of optimal size for playing. But those technical reasons no longer exist. They were solved.

And there are no technical reasons whatsoever for digital keyboards.

I think it is very stupid not to fill that need. There is a big market share waiting to be taken.

As to acoustic pianos, better grands have modular keyboards, so that the whole keyboard can be removed and replaced.There are youtube videos demonstrating that it can be done in less than 2 minutes.So you don't have to produce acoustic pianos specifically with 15/16 or 7/8 size keys

But such digital pianos are badly needed and it is very easy and very cheap to produce them. You can really shrink the keys without almost any R&D costs, as to retooling, depending on the flexibility of your production lines, those costs might be pretty low too.

And you (or somebody else) could start with empty midi controllers, just 88 keys with good piano action.

The problem here is very similar to the absurd situation with computer keyboards.There also was a technical reason in mechanical typewriters not to place keys in straight columns, and this reason is long gone, and almost all the keyboards are still produced for two right hands. Impossible to type with the left hand with the proper touch-typing technique. Even on so called "ergonomic" keyboards, such as the Microsoft Natural keyboard - they are just as bad as all the others.

So stupid tradition wins against the reason every time.That drives me mad.

With computer keyboards I am able to buy a proper one, although I have to pay 10 times more for it ($300 instead of maybe $30).With piano keyboard I am desperate enough to pay more too, perhaps not 10x more, though, because they are much more expensive than computer keyboards.

Can somebody comment on the new PX-350 action compared to Kawai ES7 (RH II) action?I don't care about the price difference, just witch has a more realistic and more responsive piano action.I have no chance to try them yet. But I could order one blindly.

And this artificial ivory coating of keys? Is it identical (perhaps from the same source) or does it feel better on one of them?

And on which of those two keyboards it is easier to reach 10ths? Are the keys of equal width, are they equally stiff and equally resist squeezing together?Every millimeter is important here.

As to the piano sound, Kawai sounds much better to me (at least in youtube videos).Even though Casio is using Steinway samples for PX-350 (true?), and I love Steinway sound.But in youtube videos, PX-350 does not sound much like Steinway to me.I miss that sweet-sour classical guitar-like Steinway sound.

Played with the PX-350 for an hour this afternoon at GC. Really liked the key action. Nice and firm. As for the textured keys, I didn't mind it on the blacks, but don't really like it on the whites. Maybe it's because I'm so used to my Yamaha acoustic piano and Kurzweil which have glossy keys. I prefer glossy because my fingers glide easier. I also suspect that the texture of the Privia's "ivory" keys will pick up finger dirt and grime quicker. To each his own, I guess. Additionally, the volume doesn't get loud enough for my liking in the bass range due to the speaker size. For in-home use, I'm sure it'll be fine, but I'd hook it up to an amp or outboard speakers to bring it to its full potential.

However with the PX 350, the strings voice continues to maintain the same volume and goes on indefinitely as long as my foot is on the pedal. So the piano sounds fine, but there's a whole mass of strings overlapping one another when ever i play a song with the layered voice.

Is this how the PX 350 supposed to sound and work? Or did i get a faulty set?

There are seven string patches to choose from for layering with your piano. Do they all do this? (Don't know myself...)

Yes, all strings do that

Not only does the strings produce the infinite sustain effect, but ALL voices with the "trailing type voices" like piano pad, choir, crystal... They all produce this... so I can't quite layer anything. Cos the peddling for the main piano voice is different from the layered voice.

Gosh. Not happy at all.

Any way to let the notes decay naturally?

I just called the service center to look into the muffled speakers... They sounds so different from piano Man chucks demo...

Again, I hate to sound like I'm trying to make a point, but these instruments do not decay naturally. On patches with decaying strings or decaying pad, the decay is artificial and varies from maker to maker. For example on my Roland, the piano is commonly layered with a decaying strings or decaying choir layer, but those are the exceptions compared to all other strings or synth sounds.

The main thing I would do is tweak the balance of the layered tones and adjust my pedaling technique.

The decay on the piano patch varies like a real piano does with better sustain the lower you go. The decaying strings patch decays the same at all registers. This is why the string layer almost can't be heard in the bass but is so much more pronounced in the treble and overwhelming in the high treble. I think balance adjustments and a different pedal technique will really help.

with the PX 350, the strings voice continues to maintain the same volume and goes on indefinitely as long as my foot is on the pedal.

In my experience (and IMO, fortunately), that is the more common way it is done on most keyboards. It actually more accurately reflects real instrument behavior, since real strings do not "fade away" as piano notes do. And practically speaking, it is particularly desirable if you want the string effect to sustain until you specifically release it, which can be useful especially when you're using multiple keyboards.

It does mean you may need to be a little more cognizant of your sustain pedal techniques... if the strings are overwhelming the piano due to the infinite sustain, odds are good that you're being heavy-footed in your use of the sustain pedal in the first place.

thanks for the reply, allow me to elaborate further.

When I hold on to the sustain pedal and press "c", it holds the note at the same volume indefinitely, even after I let go of the key. And when I press an 'e', it's now the 'c' and 'e' overlapping at the same volume indefinitely., and so on.

So when I play a song with the voice "piano" layered with any "pad", "strings", or most voices, the parts where I need to sustain with the piano (e.g. 4 to 8 notes) sounds ok, but the strings or other layered voices just keep overlapping to the point it becomes an entire mass of sound for the duration which the pedal is held on., so it's not a matter of pedal technique. Its either you pedal or you don't.

I hope it makes sense, cos this is the first digital piano I came across with this "functionality"

The main thing I would do is tweak the balance of the layered tones and adjust my pedaling technique.

The decay on the piano patch varies like a real piano does with better sustain the lower you go. The decaying strings patch decays the same at all registers. This is why the string layer almost can't be heard in the bass but is so much more pronounced in the treble and overwhelming in the high treble. I think balance adjustments and a different pedal technique will really help.

Thanks for your suggestion, actually the first thing I did was to adjust the layer volume, but as typed above , the problem is with the infinite sustain, regardless if you have held on the keys or let it go. One touch of any voice except piano or guitar, with the pedal held on will result in overlapping voices.

So I can't pretty much layer anything unless I don't pedal at all.

I've owned 2 Yamahas, tested some Korgs and they never had this issue. It might be my limited experience with digital pianos, but this its the first time I came across this

But with the 350, the first 9 notes of his famous lick would sound like 9 notes on the strings pressed together, and overshadowing the piano, add long as the sustain its pressed, with no distinction between each individual notes.